"Leguin, Ursula K - Darkrose & Diamond (txt)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Le Guin Ursula K)

URSULA K. LEGUIN

DARKROSE AND DIAMOND

A Boat-Song from West Havnor
Where my love is going
There will I go.
Where his boat is rowing
I will row.

We will laugh together,
Together we will cry.
If he lives I will live,
If he dies I die.

Where my love is going
There will I go.
Where his boat is rowing
I will row.

In the west of Havnor, among hills forested with oak and chestnut, is the town
of Glade. A while ago, the rich man of that town was a merchant called Golden.
Golden owned the mill that cut the oak boards for the ships they built in Havnor
South Port and Havnor Great Port; he owned the biggest chestnut groves; he owned
the carts and hired the carters that carried the timber and the chestnuts over
the hills to be sold. He did very well from trees, and when his son was born,
the mother said, "We could call him Chestnut, or Oak, maybe?" But the father
said, "Diamond," diamond being in his estimation the one thing more precious
than gold.

So little Diamond grew up in the finest house in Glade, a fat, bright-eyed baby,
a ruddy, cheerful boy. He had a sweet singing voice, a true ear, and a love of
music, so that his mother, Tuly, called him Songsparrow and Skylark, among other
loving names, for she never really did like "Diamond." He trilled and carolled
about the house; he knew any tune as soon as he heard it, and invented tunes
when he heard none. His mother had the wisewoman Tangle teach him The Creation
of Ea and The Deed of the Young King, and at Sunreturn when he was eleven years
old he sang the Winter Carol for the Lord of the Western Land, who was visiting
his domain in the hills above Glade. The Lord and his Lady praised the boy's
singing and gave him a tiny gold box with a diamond set in the lid, which seemed
a kind and pretty gift to Diamond and his mother. But Golden was a bit impatient
with the singing and the trinkets. "There are more important things for you to
do, son," he said. "And greater prizes to be earned."

Diamond thought his father meant the business -- the loggers, the sawyers, the
sawmill, the chestnut groves, the pickers, the carters, the carts -- all that
work and talk and planning, complicated, adult matters. He never felt that it
had much to do with him, so how was he to have as much to do with it as his